The Impact of Man on the Shoreline Environment of the Costa Del Sol, Southern Spain

摘要: The Costa del Sol is one of the world’s most developed coasts. Over past 40 years much natural coastline has been destroyed and replaced with tourist-related urban facilities, including high rise apartments, condominiums hotels. shorefront become a zone conflict, as engineers have tried to stem progressive erosion through construction seawalls, bulkheads, groynes breakwaters. performance these structures ranged from satisfactory poor, in some places exacerbating beach loss shoreline recession. At Estepona Marbella, built 1960s recently removed assist stabilising beach. environmental stress on physical resources coast may be traced spiralling demands for water aggregates. Low seasonal rainfall leads large-scale regulation order guarantee supplies agriculture areas, this turn reduced coastal stream discharge point where many rivers are dry seven nine months year. Consequently, sediment delivery minimised, resulted erosion, especially along flanks deltas. An additional problem arises extraction sand gravel agricultural purposes, further depleting levels. Also, recent marinas encouraged remobilisation facilitated its transport onto shelf. current phase nourishment serving recycle materials. There growing awareness and, inevitably, concern about future environment, embodied national regional directives aimed at reducing stress.